Modernly, the use of PCs (personal computers), including so-called laptop and notebook computers, is increasingly common and the computers themselves are ever more powerful and complex. Hardware development continues at great rates resulting in families of PCs that share parts and partial configurations yet have evolving capabilities and legion configurations. A persistent problem is the management of needed changes and enhancements to firmwares as new versions of hardware and entirely new hardware subsystems are phased in—while simultaneously avoiding excessive duplication of effort across families of related, but different, computer products. Frequently the differences are trivial at a technical level, but nonetheless crucial at an operational level.
Modernly detailed decisions as to hardware policy may be deferred until later in the development cycle than was former practice. Moreover, system variants using parts selected pursuant to tactical changes may arise. This can require rapid and adaptive approaches to hardware and related policy and flexibility in implementation. This leads to a need for capabilities above and beyond those found in previously developed solutions.
Firmware development is typically quite different from software development, including that firmware operates in unusual hardware configurations (which configurations change as the firmware moves through its run-time phases). Also firmware has an intimate relationship with hardware, especially since hardware is nowadays far more complex than it formerly was. This is a situation that software rarely has to contend with in modern times. The adoption of UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) developed from Intel's EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) based Personal Computer firmware can facilitate, but does not in itself provide, parametric policy isolation. Parametric policy isolation allows a less expert and more efficient approach to policy adaptation and evolution to be adopted, especially in response to evolving PC product requirements
A significant advantage of embodiments of the invention over previously developed solutions is that the support of policy, including hardware policy is facilitated. In consequence a plurality of more consistent and higher quality UEFI based distributed products emerge with proportionally less development effort.